Crops

Crops are nothing new to the harvest moon series. They are one of the best ways to make money early in the game and they can provide you with a multitude of income later in the game. Crops come in two varieties, ground crops and trees. You can buy ground crops from either the supermarket or Vesta's farm. However, you can only get trees from Vesta's farm. In order to grow crops, you need to have both the hoe and the watering can. The process is the same as it has been in the last few harvest moon games. I am going to cover the basics and provide some information on crops and profits in this section. Later, I will provide you with which crops to grow to make the most of your time and effort. For now just go with the one with the highest profit margin. The profits assumes that you harvest the bag once, but some crops regrow so, you can harvest them multiple times and make more money.

Ground crops: These are the crops that you plant in the ground and they grow for one season and die off. Note, grass seed is the exception because it grows for multiple seasons and years. In order to grow on of these crops you need to take the how and plow a 3X3 area and sow a bag of seeds over it. You should also leave one space between the areas, so that you can reach all of the plants, unless you want to use the harvest team to gather the crops for you. You might also want to leave one of the outer spaces on the pattern blank so you can reach the middle crop until you get the silver watering can or better. This way you don't have to wait for the middle crop to finish growing if you want to plant the same plot of land multiple times. If you are growing a renewable crop, you probably won't harvest the center plant until later anyway. You need to water the crops for the specified number of days and then you can pick them and ship them or sell them to Van for a profit. They can also be used as cooking ingredients or as gifts.

Trees: You can purchase tree sees from Vesta's farm and plant them anywhere you could grow crops. To prepare the area, plow out a 2X2 area with the hoe. Stand in the upper left hand corner of the plot and spread the seeds over the area. Make sure you leave one space all the way around the outside of the tree. Once the tree matures, nothing will be able to grow in that area anyway. You cannot plant trees right next to each other. You need to water the tree everyday until it becomes a saporling. Afterwards, you just need to let the tree grow. It takes several seasons for a tree to mature and bear fruit. Trees will only bear fruit during a specific season. They will bear fruit every couple of days, which you can ship or cook with. Generally, trees require less maintenance once they become saporling, but ground crops yield a better profit in the long run.

Ground Crop Shipping Prices
Crop	Grow Time	Regrow time	Shipping Price	1 Bag Shipping Price
Spring Crops
Turnip	5 days	none	60g	540g
Potato	8 days	none	80g	720g
Strawberry	9 days	2 days	30g	270g
Cucumber	10 days	2 days	60g	540g
Toy Flower	13 days	none	130g	1170g
Cabbage	14 days	none	250g	2250g
Summer Crops
Onion	8 days	none	80g	720g
Tomatoes	10 days	2 days	60g	540g
Corn	15 days	3 days	100g	900g
Pumpkin	15 days	none	250g	2250g
pineapple	21 days	5 days	500g	4500g
Pink Cat Flowers	7 days	none	70g	630g
Fall Cropss
Spinach	6 days	none	80g	480g
Sweet Potato	6 days	2 days	100g	900g
Carrot	8 days	none	120g	1080g
Pepper	8 days	2 days	40g	360g
Eggplant	10 days	3 days	80g	720g
Magic Red Flowers	11 days	none	200g	1800g

Tree Crop Shipping Prices
Crop	Shipping Price
Peach	250g
Banana	200g
Orange	200g
Apples	100g
Grapes	200g

Grass grows in all seasons but winter and regrow every 15 days or so to make fodder for building or animal feed.

You can plant any of the ground crops or trees anywhere on the map including your farm or any of the other fields available around the town. I have noticed that the crops will grow at a different rates in different areas. The table above list the time it takes for them to grow on your farm. The take another day to grow if you plant them in the many fields located around the main part of the city. They will grow one day faster if you plant them in the fields located near the waterfall in front of the dig sit. Crops will grow the fastest if you plant them in the secret field behind the waterfall. You need the Legendary Swords from the second mine to break the rocks blocking your way to the waterfall cave field. Regardless of location crops sell for the same price everywhere.

Crops also have multiple levels. Crops begin at level one and can go quite high, I haven't found the upper bound on them yet, but I know they go above 10 levels. Higher level crops will ship for a lot more than their lower level counter parts. For example, level 1 sweet potatoes sell for 100g each, while level 10 sweet potatoes sell for around 8000g each. As you can see, leveling up seeds can quickly lead to a higher profit margin. However, this takes quite a bit of work to achieve. The process to obtaining higher level sees is quite simple in nature, but it takes a great deal of patience and time to achieve. The process is described in detail below.

Raising the level of crops is very simple, all you need to do is plant multiple bags of seeds on the same 9 squares of land overtop of each other. The seeds you plant all need to be at the same level, and you need to plant at least two bags in order for them to advance a level. You simply water and harvest the crops in the manner described above as you normally would. However, when you pick the crops, there is a reasonable probability that some of the crops you harvest will have increased one level above their standard seeds. The more bags of seeds you plant on an area, the better chance each particular crops has of increasing one level in value. Planting multiple bags of the seeds that you buy from the store will yield level two crops. Unfortunately, this is as far as you can go with the crops from the store. To advance their levels higher, you need to purchase the seed maker from the black smith.

The seed maker costs 20000g and requires a piece of admit from the third mine to construct. It takes several days like upgrading a tool does, and it is then delivered to your farm. You need to purchase a maker shed before you can buy it from the black smith. You can read more about finding admit in the mining section and the shed in the building section. The seed maker allows you to turn harvested crops into bags of seeds at a 1 to 1 ratio. The transformation is instantaneous. Each crop you put in will yield a bag of seeds equal to the level of the crop. For example, a level 2 crop yields level 2 seeds. You can then take these new seed and plant multiple bags of them on the same plot of land to increase the crops one more level. Then, you can repeat the process to grow higher level crops. However, this is a time consuming process, because each time you do it you have to start growing the crops all over again. It takes several game years, so be patient with it. The secret waterfall field can be a big help here, because seeds grow faster their than on the normal farm. I will add the profit increase equation later when I break it down.

Another interesting thing about crops is the ability to grow giant versions of crops in the game. I have only had this happen to me twice so far, but it's a neat addition to the game. Sometimes when you plant a bag of crops, a giant version will grow and take up for spaces on the screen. These larger crops seem to be random and rare in nature. If you are luck enough to have one, on the day that it is ready to harvest Thomas comes over and offers to take it off your hands. If you accept, you will view a short cut scene where the harvest sprites from mineral town come over and take it. Then you will find that it shipped out for several thousand dollars the next day. I don't have any idea what causes it, but it's just another neat addition to the game.

As far as strategy goes, I am still out on that one. I would recommend getting your crops to the highest level you can because their shipping prices seem to grow at a geometric rate. Try to focus on crops with a short growing time and a fast regrow period regardless of price. This will allow you to upgrade their level quickly, and it will also allow you to get multiple harvests out of higher level crops without having to regrow them from seeds every time. Unlike previous games, growing speed will ultimately determine the best profit margin unless you get all the crops to the highest available level. If you have two different crops, and they are two levels apart, the higher level crop will sell for more than the lower level one. So, you want to focus on speed over shipping value. I would recommend sticking with strawberries, tomatoes, and yams for the time being. I will add more on this as the guide develops.

Just another quick update, I now have the equation for the shipping prices of the leveled up vegetables. I just needed about 10 levels or so to see what it was. The shipping price for a leveled up crops is:

baseprice * level²

Where the base prices is the shipping prices of a level 1 version of the crop and the level is the level of the seeds. For example, if I wanted to know the shipping price of a level 19 yam then I would go the following calculation. The shipping price of a level 1 yam is 100g from the table above and the level in this case is 19 so the shipping prices would be:

baseprice * level²

=baseprice * level * level

=100 * 19 *19

=100 * 361

=36100g

So, as you can see from this example it is pretty easy to figure out the shipping price of an upper level crop. You can multiply the result by 9 to get the shipping prices of a bag of leveled up crops. As you can see here, crops are the key to making money in the game. For example if we look at a level 100 yam it would sell for 100³ = 1000000g, so a bag of level 100 yams will ship out for 9 million dollars. If you planted say 100 bags of level 100 yams you would make almost a billion dollars for one harvest of yams and you can harvest them 13 times in one season. It would take about 4 game years of leveling up seeds to get the quickest growing ones to level 100, but by then you should have pretty good money anyway.

The Basement:

The basements are another way that you can grow crops in the game. It is a useful addition to your house, because it allows you to grow crops out of season. This will allow you to upgrade your crop levels quicker than just growing crops in their own season. In order to build the basement you need to have the second house upgrade purchased. You can have up to three floors to the basement. Each floor is like the first except that the first is the only one that has a watering hole in it. In order to grow some thing in the basement, you need to have the appropriate season's sun. You can find them in the third mine and the process is well outlined in the mining section of the guide. You simply place the sun on the box on the appropriate floor and plant the crops as you normally would above ground. Multiple levels will allow you to grow crops from different seasons at the same time. The costs and construction of the basements are located in the building sections.

Trees:

Trees are another good source of income in that they produce fruit that you can sell or use for cooking. Trees require less maintained than ground crops and will produce fruit year after year once they mature. They can also be upgraded like ground crops, but it takes a long time because they require a long time to grow. To plant a tree, till a 2x2 area of ground and stand with the seeds in the upper left hand corner of the formation. Keep in mind, that nothing will grow in the squares surrounding a tree. So, plan your planting carefully and give them plenty of room. You can buy tree seeds from Vesta's shop for between 800g and 3000g each. Once the seeds are sown, you will need to water them for about two weeks until they grow into a saporling.

Once a tree reaches the saporling state, you can stop watering it and it will mature on its own. It take two seasons for a tree to mature and another one before it will bear fruit. A tree will blossom one season before it will bear fruit. Banana and orange trees bear fruit in the summer and apple, grape, and peach trees bear fruit in the fall. A tree will bear one piece of fruit every other day. Trees really don't provide as good of a profit margin as ground crops do, however they are low maintenance because all you need to do is pick them. The fruit from trees is used in several of the recipes and make good gifts for people around town. Trees take too long to grow to upgrade them effectively. Tress will not bear fruit in the basement or behind the waterfall.